Suffer Together

Today at Grace we featured a song called "Suffer Together." The song was written, played, and sang by Mandi Eldredge, a high school student at our church. This was her first crack at writing a song, and I think it is a pretty good one. It fit the message/theme of the service perfectly, so we plugged it in.

Mandi is also one of my guitar students. She brought the song to one of her lessons a couple of months ago, and we started working on it. We changed a few words, changed the phrasing of the melody, changed the chord progression here and there, and tweaked it a couple of other ways. Songs are rarely finished first after being written. At least the good ones aren't. They usually need room/time to grow and transform. Like many things in life, they need a partner that can help in the maturing process. Someone who can strip away the fluff and make it as good as possible. Here are the lyrics:


Verse 1:
We put on fake smiles to cover up our pain.
We don’t want the world to see our shame.
We build up our walls to keep our hearts safe,
But all we end up doing is heaping on the pain.

Chorus:
Let’s suffer together
and take down our masks.
We don’t have it all together.
Please, let’s drop the act.

Verse 2:
We talk about our friends when they’re not around.
Look how bad they cover what we have learned to drown.
Two people are better off than one,
for they can help each other until the battle’s won.

Chorus

Bridge:
We all go through the same things. We all wear the same chains.
We all go through the same things. We all wear the same chains.

Chorus: just guitar
Chorus: full band
Outro:
Let’s suffer…………together.

Going to visit a church on Sunday night

The Search is an emerging worship community at University Christian Church near TCU here in Fort Worth. They meet at 5:00 pm on Sundays, and Margo and I are going to check it out this Sunday. I'm really looking forward to it. You can hear a couple of messages here. I'll probably post a recap afterwards. It sounds like they launched this service about 1 year ago. I'm interested to see how they approach worship, the design of the service, and what elements they incorporate.

why people stop volunteering

A recent season of volunteer turnover in the ministry I lead has led me to some reflection. Here are my observations

Why do people stop volunteering in a ministry?

life changes - Something core to the flow of life changes, and everything goes out of whack. A new baby. A new spouse. A new job. A new obsession. What used to be normal, routine volunteering gets put on hold.

gift changes - I'm a firm believer that God is the one giving out the spiritual gifts in the Church. And since they are His gifts, He can take them back if He chooses, or give them to someone else. Someone will stop volunteering if the gifting for that ministry leaves.

vision changes - Maybe the direction the ministry is headed is somewhere the volunteer can't/won't go. They're not onboard with the overall vision of the ministry and what needs to happen.

spiritual life changes - God does something in the life of the volunteers and priorities get reset. Instead of volunteering in a ministry, something else that is needed is done [by the leading of the Holy Spirit].

spiritual life doesn't change - Stagnation. The conduit for the Holy Spirit that we can potentially be gets clogged up due to inactivity. Volunteers stop seeing the point of serving. Or worse, they don't "feel" anything from serving. Or even worse still, they don't "get anything out of it." When did the definition of servanthood change to "personal fulfillment/benefit"?

nothing changes - In other words...people get bored! Volunteers start dropping out when they don't feel connected with other volunteers. When the job is so monotonous and there is never a challenge or new twist volunteers don't believe it is worth their time.

Mark Labberton on Baptism

Baptism is a mark of our new identity, based not on the power of tribe or family, education or status, race or gender, but on the power of God's promises. This is the gift of an identity that bears the marks of God's saving power. Infant baptism especially conveys this - emphasizing that before we have the power to do anything, God's power is for us. Similarly, in adult baptism we enter into the death and resurrection of the One who alone has power to triumph over sin and death. God's power, evident in baptism, is the power both to promise and to be faithful, to create and re-create, to name and rename, to die and to rise.

The Dangerous Act of Worship p. 120

Rob Bell Live

Going to see Rob Bell on November 16 at the Nokia in Grand Prarie. I'm very much looking forward to hearing him. Full list of tour dates is here.

intern blog

I have a couple of interns for the Worship Ministry at church this summer.

One of the things I'm teaching my interns about is blogging. I've created a blog just for them to interact with and leave comments on.

GraceIntern.blogspot.com

Hopefully I can inspire them to create their own blogs. If nothing else, I want to show them the potential blogs have for creating conversation, communication, and transparency.

Jesus was no Southern Baptist

Al Mohler [president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] says...

I can assure you of this: if you are associated with the use of beverage alcohol, I think I dare exaggerate not to say that 99% of all doors of ministry in the Southern Baptist Convention will be closed to you.

Dan Kimball says...

But what is intriguing me about this statement is that with this view, I am wondering - would Jesus then have 99% of the ministry doors shut on Him?

But I would be interested in how this statement would be played out in regards to Jesus, since He drank and even created wine (when there was also alcohol abuse happening in His time) - and even the sacrament of the Lord's Supper/Communion was originally with wine as well. I am wondering about this - especially if you are a Southern Baptist. If Jesus came to apply for a job as a Southern Baptist pastor, would He have 99% of the doors shut?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...if Jesus showed up in Anytown, USA in year 2007, he would be labeled by the MAJORITY of Christians as a hippie with loose morals that hangs out with strippers and homeless people. So, Jesus surely couldn't be a Southern Baptist, and maybe not a Christian at all.

He'd just have to be himself.

Eight Principles of Public Scripture Reading

These are some notes from my "Worship Leadership" class that I took in seminary:

1. Read at a pace that will help the hearer to grasp the message of the passage.

2. Practice the reading aloud until you have eliminated the "stumbling" from your delivery.

3. Make a conscious effort to help the hearer catch the proper emphases in the passage.

4. Learn to use the pause effectively.

5. Be convinced of the importance, relevance, and value of the passage for yourself and for the congregation.

6. Read with sincerity.

7. Make a conscious effort to complement the beauty of the passage by reading with appropriate tonal shading.

8. Reflect the emotion inherent in the passage.

death by ministry

As controversial as he can be, he has some really good thoughts about how ministry can literally zap the life out of you.

Watch the video here.

Mark's blog

I quote his comments regarding getting a wedding coordinator for your church:

Otherwise you're going to be at a chicken dinner on Friday, you'll be wearing a suit on Saturday, you'll be at church on Sunday, and you're going to have a gun in your mouth on Monday. And that's going to be your summer.

Communion Service

We had a neat, experimental Communion service today at Grace. We only had 1 service [instead of 3] with the whole church family gathered in 1 room, seated around tables. The theme of the service was "3 Tables of the Bible." We celebrated [1] a portion of the Passover meal, [2] the Lord's Supper, and [3] looked forward to the marriage supper of the Bride & Groom.

Some pictures:







































A big thanks to all who helped make it happen. Here was the order of the service:

I. Gathering of God's People
-"We Are Called to Be God's People" [NETTLETON]
-Welcome

II. Passover Table
-"Passover Us" by Andrew Peterson
-Scripture Reading: Exodus 12:1-15, 21-30
-Message
-Unleavened bread & bitter herb elements

III. Lord's Supper Table
-Medley of "There is a Fountain, What Wondrous Love Is This, and The Old Rugged Cross"
-Scripture Reading: Matthew 26:17-30
-Message
-Bread and wine element

IV. Marriage Supper Table
-"How Beautiful" by Twila Paris
-Scripture Reading: Revelation 19:7-9
-Message
-Unity candle element

V. Sending of God's People
-Benediction: Hebrews 13:20-21

An outsiders take on a mega-church service

From Rev Magazine in an article by Sally Morgenthaler:

The [worship team] was young and pretty, dressed in the kind of quality-cotton-punk clothing one buys at the Gap. ‘Lift up your hands, open the door,’ crooned the
lead singer, an inoffensive tenor. Male singers at [this] and other megachurches are almost always tenors, their voices clean and indistinguishable, R&B-inflected one moment, New Country the next, with a little bit of early ‘90s grunge at the beginning and the end.

They sound like they’re singing in beer commercials, and perhaps this is not coincidental. The worship style is a kind of musical correlate to (their pastor’s) free market theology: designed for total accessibility, with the illusion of choice between strikingly similar brands. (He prefers the term flavors, and often uses Baskin-Robbins as a metaphor when explaining his views.) The drummers all
stick to soft cymbals and beats anyone can handle; the guitarists deploy effects like artillery but condense them, so the highs and lows never stretch too wide. Lyrics tend to be rhythmic and pronunciation perfect, the better to sing along with when
the words are projected onto movie screens. Breathy or wailing, vocalists drench their lines with emotion, but only within strict confines. There are no sad songs in a megachurch, and there are no angry songs. There are songs about desperation, but none about despair; songs convey longing only if it has already been fulfilled.

anybody ever heard of this guy?

I've become intrigued by this nut. According to his bio he:

pastored a large church in LA

hosted a late night tv show

ran a 24 hour satellite network

helped start Oral Roberts Univ.

got a phD from Stanford [as you humbly heard in the video]

was married 3 times

liked to smoke cigars and use off-colored language [as you can also hear in the video!]

was president of the Full Gospel Fellowship of Churches and Ministers International

was a missionary/evangelist for the Assembly of God denomination

died of cancer, after refusing traditional medical treatment, and claiming that God had healed him for 4 years

Obviously a nut right? I think I'd like to have known him though. I bet he was a riot. Sure, he's way off when it comes to church, but aren't we all?

"If you put religion over relationship, you'll be the most religious person in hell."

Not a quote from Dr. Scott.

dissolved

I learned today that a church I nearly served at about 4 years ago has dissolved. Shut the doors, closed shop, moved on to something else.

Are churches like people? [They're definitely made up of people.] Do all churches have to die? Are there normal stages of life in a church? Are they like stars that explode into existence, then collapse at the end?

Sometimes I think we view churches too much like individual trees, and not enough like branches of a huge tree. One church dying is not much different than one branch or leave being snapped off. Maybe it was diseased or holding the tree back from growing. Maybe it was ravaged by pests. A church dying is not like a whole tree dying, but like a small part of a tree being removed.

A huge tree.

I like Tony Morgan's post about doing ministry without strategy. I feel for the people involved, but I'm glad God led me elsewhere to plant myself. Otherwise, I'd be out of a job right now. But I wonder if things would be different for that church if I would have been hired and served there. I'm not saying that I'm the solution to every church's problem! But I wonder if it would have made a difference.

Len Sweet quote

from "The Gospel According to Starbucks"

Christian faith is designed to be lived experiences of beauty, not well-structured thought experiments.

To see how far we have traveled down the rational path, look at your church. Don't focus on what it believes or its official statement of faith; rather, consider how much time your church expends in creating beauty. What does it do to develop embodied practices and multisensory experiences? For most of Christian history, the church was the major patron of the arts. But today, what role does art and poetry have in your worship? What works of art function as works of devotion in your spiritual life, enriching your home life and the life of your church?

I'm proud to say:

Grace has visual art hanging throughout the buildings made by our very own artists

Grace featured a group of very talented dancers in our Palm Sunday services

Grace is featuring a humorous drama presentation in all of our Easter services this Sunday

every week Grace has some of the greatest volunteers offering their talents in creating beautiful music in worship

Way to go Grace!

God of ?

This is a video I made for our a.k.a.: GOD series at Grace. We're asking the congregation this Sunday to ponder who God has revealed Himself to be to them.

review of contemporary services at Grace, 3/11

God of All [Twila Paris, with an added bridge of the Doxology], sung by Deana Shirley

Welcome/Baptism

Scripture Reading - Psalm 100 [read in unison]

Worship Set: Holy Is the Lord [Tomlin], Beautiful One [Hughes], Thou Lovely Source of True Delight [Steele, ala Jars of Clay], Lord Most High [Sadler/?]

Prayer

Message: Names of God

Response

Offering/Announcements

web resource

ReJesus.co.uk

This is a very cool little site by our British brothers & sisters. My favorite parts are:

posting a prayer and lighting a virtual candle

the 7 sayings of Jesus videos...which I'm borrowing from heavily for our Good Friday service this year

the labyrinth

the faces of Jesus

Ethiopian Jesus from the 16-17th Century

emergent manifesto of hope

Satan's Sex Ed

Thank you, LifeChurch.tv.

conference

Carlos is at re:create.

So I figured I'd share my conference plans for this year. I'll be attending the National Worship Leader Conference in July down in Austin. I'm looking forward to it for several reasons:

I'll get to take a friend/band member

Marva Dawn...one of my favorite authors/speakers...I heard her several years ago, and it changed the way I think about worship.

Marcos Witt...I heard him at Saddleback last summer, and he was a hoot

Francis Chan...who was at Passion 07, and I heard it was good

All the other music & speakers...it is an incredible list!