November 29th, 2007 — Photos
The girls and I went down to Louisville, KY last week for Thanksgiving with extended family.
Shot during a raucous game of dominos. Those are my grandmother’s hands in the background.
My love (and her hot new haircut, courtesy of the lovely and talented Laura. Unfortunately, you can’t really tell anything in b&w.)
My other love.
November 27th, 2007 — The Church, Theology
There seem to be two dominant schools of thought when it comes to who the primary purpose and (human) audience is in corporate worship. One says “the primary purpose of the corporate gathering is to convince unbeliever and the ’seekers’ of the beauty of Christ and call them into a ‘personal relationship’ with Him, making new worshipers of God” The other says “no, the primary purpose of the corporate gathering is the worship of God by His people, edifying and training them to do the work of the Church, including evangelism.”
So, which is it?
I was prompted recently to remember a on online conversation from the old DerekWebb.com forums (around 2004, I think) that had a profound effect on how I saw corporate worship. In it, a friend said something that I never had previously seen or heard articulated — that the so-called “seeker-sensitive” model of doing church that’s so dominant in evangelical America is wrong-headed and that when the church gathers, it does so for worship and teaching, not for evangelism. That statement knocked me for a loop, as I’d been pretty entrenched in the “gotta win souls, gotta get ‘em to walk the aisle or pray the prayer” culture for most of my life. At the same time, it really resonated with me, as I was already convinced that Hybels/Warren seeker-driven “worship” was inadequate. (It didn’t help that the church that I was a member of at the time was then preparing to go through Warren’s “40 Days of Purpose” dreck.) God really used that one post to start me on the road to learning about, embracing, and valuing corporate worship as more than just a time to “win souls”.
So now, it’s three years later. I’ve learned a lot, matured a little (I hope), and I find myself at a tension between the two schools of thought. I’m starting to think that to reach either conclusion is to embrace the same false dichotomy (albeit on different ends of the spectrum). This dichotomy suggests (or outright states, in some extreme cases) that while the Gospel message of Christ’s burial, death, and resurrection (accompanied by the Spirit) is what convinces the unbeliever and brings him into relationship with Christ, it’s something else — something “more” — that empowers the believer to then live as Christ calls him or her to live. That the Gospel is our entryway into the family of God, and after we’re in, we move beyond the Gospel to more “advanced” Christianity of some sort.
Regardless of how well-intentioned this is, it’s moralism at best, and at worst, gnosticism. The fact is that the Gospel that converts the neophyte “seeker” is the same Gospel that empowers the most mature believer to live day-by-day as Jesus calls. There’s a story that’s been told numerous times of the great Reformer, Martin Luther. In the church that he was pastoring, preached the Gospel to his congregation, week after week after week after week. His people wondered why they couldn’t move on. Surely we get the Gospel by now, Pastor! Why do you keep preaching the Gospel every week? His answer: “Because every week, you forget it.” We never move beyond the Gospel because the Gospel is what grounds us.
Now, this isn’t to say that every week, a simplistic “Gospel” message from John 3:16 is to be preached. Not at all. But too often, passages that don’t explicitly say the words “Jesus” or “Christ” are preached in such a way that robs them of meaning and reduces them to moralistic platitudes (ie: “How to live a victorious life”, “How to have a good marriage”, “Why we need prayer in schools”, etc). We seem to forget what should be obvious: that the Bible — the entire Bible — is about JESUS. This means that every passage of scripture, including those from the Old Testament, can and should be preached in such a way that points to Christ as glorious and the only solution to our problem. Take, for instance, the “unauthorized (or strange) fire” incident in Numbers 3 in which the priests Nadab and Abihu were charbroiled for not worshiping God as He had told them — it would be easy, especially for Presbyterians like myself, to preach a sermon entirely focused on the Regulative Principle with absolutely no Christ! But Jesus is there! God’s wrath justly burns against us as it did against Nadab and Abihu, and like them, we should be consumed. But no . . . Christ took that upon himself on the cross, and upon Christ the flames of God’s wrath are burned out, never again to be ignited against those who belong to him.
Jesus is there.
Therefore, it would seem to me that our worship and our preaching should be neither seeker-focused nor believer-focused, but Gospel-focused. We preach the Gospel every week from whatever passage of Scripture we’re in, and then allow (and expect) that Gospel to have its intended effect on each one there, whether believer or “seeker”. We need to let go of the either/or mentality.
November 19th, 2007 — Technology, The Church
After a hiatus of about a year and a half (thanks to some issues with our recording equipment), the Grace Central podcast is back up and running. The timing coincides well with the debut of the new site and the start of a new sermon series in Colossians.
Links for ya . . .
RSS feed
Subscribe w/ iTunes
iTunes Store link
Check it out.
November 11th, 2007 — The Church
Go here.
There are still a few glitches and kinks that need to be worked out here and there, but . . . it’s up. And it’s about eleventy bazillion times better than having a site that hadn’t been updated since October 2005.
And speaking of Grace Central . . . we started a new series tonight in Colossians. I’m pretty excited about it. Lots of parallels and similarities between the context the church in Colossae was in, and our own (young church, very diverse congregation, etc). Should be good.
November 7th, 2007 — Life
Three hundred sixty-five days until I hit thirty years old.
I’m not sure how I feel about this.
October 29th, 2007 — Books, Music
You really have no excuse now. Subscribe now to the best music mag around.
(HT: Travis)
October 26th, 2007 — Geekdom, Technology
After work, I took myself down to my local Apple Store to purchase a copy of the newest version of OS X. The doors were closed from 4-6pm in preparation. I got there around 4:50, and snagged a pretty good spot in line. I was in and out of the store by 6:05. Felt kinda bad for the scores of people still outside in line as I was walking to my car with my copy of Leopard in hand.
So, here, I’ll be liveblogging my backup and install process and any hiccups or surprises along the way. Stick around if you’re interested!
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7:01P - Backing up files, folders, and settings to external 750GB hard drive. Downloading most recent versions of third-party apps.
7:29P - Break! Dinner time.
8:16P - Back to work after lasagna, salad, and breadsticks. Backing up iPhoto and iTunes libraries.
8:28P - Still finding and downloading third-party app updates. Time to put Zoë to bed.
9:47P - Put Zoë to bed and hung out w/ wifey. Now downloading most recent VMWare Fusion beta.
10:11P - Backups and downloads complete. About to begin clean install of Leopard. See you on the flip side! (Actually… I’ll just continue blogging using Amy’s PC.)
10:26P - (Now blogging using Amy’s Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. Yuck.) Inserted Leopard install DVD. Selected “Erase and Install”. Installation is currently checking the install DVD for errors.
10:42P - Disc checking complete. Installation has started. Estimated time remaining: 50 minutes.
11:19P - Installation is complete in just under 40 minutes. Reboot. “Welcome” montage is annoying, as always. New VoiceOver voice is surprisingly human-sounding.
11:22P - Going through usual initial setup steps. No, I do not want to sign up for a one-year 99.95 USD .Mac membership, thanks.
11:24P - And that’s it! Software Update opened up w/ an update for Remote Desktop.
October 26th, 2007 — Theology
Some of you have surely heard about this already, but I thought I’d put it out there and spread the word . . .
Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle (and one of my favorite preachers and missional thinkers), is set to start a new sermon series in January. In this, he’ll be answering the top nine questions submitted to him, via askanything.marshillchurch.org. The top questions are determined by a Digg-type voting system. This sermon series will later take shape as a book.
The top questions right now are decent. A question about the Regulative Principle of Worship has held the number one spot for most of the first round. There are also some about church planting, eschatology, sexual sin/purity, etc. (There are also some downright goofy questions that you can come across by clicking the “Random” link.) I’m looking forward to seeing how this series will shape up.
Anyway, I went ahead and submitted a question yesterday on the Lord’s Supper, and thanks to some friends, it’s shot up to the top 40 questions in a matter of hours. I’m now enlisting your help. If you think that my question is worth answering, click on the above link and vote it up further. You get ten votes a day.
Even if it doesn’t make it into the top nine, I’d love to get some good discussion going on it, so don’t be shy. There’s a comment section there on the site as well.
October 18th, 2007 — School
October 8th, 2007 — The Church
On October 6, 2007, five Grace Central men (myself included) were examined by a commission of the Great Lakes Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America as candidates for church office (either that of Ruling Elder or Deacon). As it was put in yesterday’s church bulletin, “in a furious, stunning display of biblical knowledge, Christian character, and theological acumen, [we] each emerged victorious.”
Now, the matter goes to the congregation for nominations and elections (all taking place over the next couple of months). The elders-elect (and deacons-elect, if any) will then be ordained and installed, and Grace Central will be officially be organized as a particular church of the PCA. After that, the real work begins.
BUT . . . the studying, training, and meeting up with the guys every Saturday morning at 7:30 over the past eighteen months is over. And it paid off.
(Thanks to everyone who prayed for me.)
