i noticed this way back in march when i bought Page CXVI just to check out some redone “hymns”. there’s this song on it called “joy”. i recognized the song from Psalty that i listened to in car rides as a kid or in sunday school. (if you don’t know who Psalty is, thats fine… now that i look at him he’s kinda scary. christians are crazy sometimes). the original song as i knew it can be found in this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9wc8IFparU

the remake in the Page CXVI album sounds pretty depressing. i sent it to my brother and a few friends familiar w/ the original song to see what they thought and everyone was like “this is so depressing. i almost wanna kill myself listening to this”. you could listen for yourself below (sorry i couldnt find a better youtube recording):

on the new matt redman album “we shall not be shaken” there’s a song called “my hope” which is based on the hymn “on christ the solid rock”. the original hymn is a pretty victorious sounding song (if you don’t know the song you can find countless recordings/versions of it on youtube). redman’s remake is embedded below:

i’m posting about these songs because i think i’m beginning to understand the point these guys are trying to make in singing these songs in the manner that they do. while these songs can often be applied in a celebratory way, singing about the joy and hope we have in christ, i think the truths these words convey need to be heard even more when we’re in the valleys of life… when we don’t feel like celebrating or being “happy”… when the normal melodies of these songs would frustrate us or even make us angry that such a happy sounding song could exist when the world seems perpetually grey and gloomy in our eyes. it makes the truths we need to be reminded of more… receivable.

i have always had a love hate relationship with my church. i’ve had more than my fair share of criticizing my church (those that know me know this is a gross understatement): we make dumb decisions, sermons are often very… incoherent, sometimes “spirituality” feels forced, communication is pretty poor, and so on and so on. being from new york, i’ve always had many other churches to look at. i’ve seen how other churches function and i often wish my church functioned differently. the temptation to just jump ship has always been right there. my friends often jokingly–or maybe it’s really just half-jokingly–say i should probably go somewhere else. but i’ve stayed.

one reason i’ve stayed is because i think regular church hopping is bad for you. it feeds into this idea that the church is just some organization to feed one’s tastes and wants. it’s this “consumer-mentality” where we go around shopping for what we like… and if something doesn’t quite please us, that’s a sign to drop and move on to another. regularly doing that leads to a lot of me-thinking when the church is really about us and our relationship with God not just my relationship with God.

to help myself put this in perspective i sometimes think about people who live in places where the option of another church isn’t even there… people who grow up in places where there is just one church… one body of believers. if i were in such a place would the first stupid leadership decision make me leave? where would i go? where else can i share in worship or bible study or prayer? the early church brought people together that had no reason to be together. the rich and the poor were equals in the church. educated and uneducated shared in meals together. people didn’t have the option of going from church to church looking for people they would fit them better or be more like them. in such a place i think one would learn by necessity to have grace on each other… to learn to love and to live with each other despite our differences or shortcomings.

thus, another reason why i’ve stayed is because i’ve committed myself to this body. i think it’s this reason that grounds me when i start thinking about leaving or when frustrations begin to overwhelm me. what does it mean to be committed to a body? again, i think it means continuing to love your church no matter what happens. it’s often said that the christian life is not meant to be lived alone–it’s true. i think the bible instructs us more as a body of people than as an individual. it tells us to “walk in love”, to “grow up in Christ”, to “love oneanother”, to “bear each other’s burdens”… all things that you can’t do on your own. committing to a body is a way of saying “these people here, as frustrating and broken as they may be are the instrument  that God is using to make me more like himself.” through others, God shows us more of himself. he teaches us his patience, his pain, his grace, and his faithfulness. isn’t he committed to us? no matter how many times we disappoint him or frustrate him or disobey him? God shows us grace and shows us his love is still constant for us despite our weakness.

the church, whichever one you may be at, is made up of broken and messed up people. yes there are some reasons why you should leave a church… if your church is talking about the 4th person of the Godhead or “all roads lead to the same greater power and lifeforce” then it’s probably time you should get outta there. but i think many of the reasons people move to different churches is weak and shows a very self-centered view of church. as i mentioned before, i wish i had not bailed on my previous church. i have a  great admiration for those that have stayed with their churches through extremely tough and barren times. i think that takes real faith and commitment… to move forward even when things are falling apart and it seems like you’re doing it alone. christ didn’t abandon us at the cross. if God came to us when we were not just disagreeable, but straightup offensive to him… if we recognize the grace and love shown us, it gives us the power to give grace and love to the body that God has called us to grow together with.

often when i chat with people, i listen “in between the lines” of what they say and i hear, though rarely explicitly said, this weird notion that having pain and suffering makes you good or makes you a better person or something like that. some of you might be like “what?! who would think something so stupid?” it’s there. i’ve heard it. ive heard it mainly in church settings though. maybe it’s only in some christian circles… christians are sometimes crazy and have things backwards. in christian-land i’ve heard things like “you should do A instead of B because you’ll have a harder time doing A” or something like, “if you’re doing something and you’re not suffering, you’re doing something wrong.” i say NONSENSE. there’s this weird “pursuit of pain” that seems so obviously stupid but is very real. maybe i’m a bit harsh here, suffering teaches us a lot. but who in their right mind goes after it? the first thing i thought of was this quote (which i had a hard time trying to remember exactly where it came from)…

from Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis (emphasis mine):

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ.

i’ll try to use a non-c.s. lewis quote in my next post but i think he puts it very well.

–edit–

right as i published this, simon sent me this post about mr. rogers. its related… somewhat. if not related just read it anyway. mr. rogers was a good man.

[Eustace speaking to Jill...] “I can’t help wondering, can we – could we -?”

“Do you mean, do something to make it happen?”

Eustace nodded.

“You mean we might draw a circle on the ground – and write in queer letters in it – and stand inside it – and recite charms and spells?”

“Well,” said Eustace after he had thought hard for a bit. “I believe that was the sort of thing I was thinking of, though I never did it. But now that it comes to the point, I’ve an idea that all those circles and things are rather rot. I don’t think he’d like them. It would look as if we thought we could make him do things. But really, we can only ask him.”

At a particular youth retreat (though this could have happened at almost any of the retreats) I served at in the past year, there was feedback from a particular youth concerning the way one of the evenings was conducted. he said something like “they did the whole dim-lighting-soothing-music-emotional-manipulation thing… i didn’t like that at all”. on that particular evening, i sat in with one of the guys small groups having discussions and a lot of them expressed similar disdain for the practice: “it was weird”, “why did they have to do that?”, “i just didn’t like it.”

I often share only half-jokingly that worship leaders are masters at emotional manipulation. Worship leaders know what songs can get people excited, what songs can stir emotions of guilt, what songs can “create” devotion. We can ask people to hold hands, to change their posture, to respond with well-known call and responses (i.e. God is good? all the time…), etc. Yes, I do understand that true transformation can only be done by God, but often times, the imitation looks very very similar–similar enough that I think people settle for it.

I know I have.

Yes, I’ve done it before. I’ve grown from it I think but honestly the temptation to “create” worship is always there. This isn’t post isn’t “confessions of a worship leader” so I’ll stop myself on that here. I just want to say that being one who’s been on the giving side before, it makes me extra alert when I’m on the receiving side of worship. When things get intense, sometimes it’s clearly a God thing (I don’t know how to explain it, but if you’ve been there, you just know), but other times it’s not so clear and I stop and ask myself “What’s really going on here?”

I’m worried this post will be read as just another one of those anti-emotion rants as I’m trying to craft this post but that’s not what I’m trying to do. I understand that music is an aid to worship; it has it’s purpose. Nor am I attempting to define when music is “too much”. I don’t like being fooled or tricked. I doubt anyone does. But I think many times in churches and retreats and whatevers, we trick ourselves.

I doubt there are many worship leaders or pastors out there who create the atmosphere with bad intentions. I also doubt few people who read this would say anything like “I want the imitation, don’t give me the real thing.” But I think both ministers (including worship leaders) and people in the congregation often do our own version of “draw a circle on the ground – and write in queer letters in it – and stand inside it – and recite charms and spells”. There are unwritten formulas we go through to make us feel close to God or make it look like God is “moving in our midst”. God does work even in our messed up formulas but I’d just challenge people to just stop and ask “What’s really going on here?”, “Why am I doing this?”, and “Who am I really doing this for?”

the end.

and by drink i don’t mean in the duh duh sense that we all drink water, OJ, etc. i mean that from time to time, i pick up beers when i grocery shop, and from time to time i meet up w/ some friends and chat over some shots. it just so happens that some of these friends serve with me on worship team at church.

i had an interesting discussion with my pastor about it last night. its such a touchy issue… in my eyes its a very unnecessary issue. one of the things that irk me is when people take cultural norms and try to make them biblical norms. as far as my biblical understanding goes, alcohol is not inherently wrong. i don’t think any thinking person could make any such claim. so i guess it bothers me that people have this presupposition that drinking is bad.

the end result of our discussion is that we both recognized the problem that people have a false perception of the whole drinking business. the difference we had was that we approached the problem differently. he would rather we abstain to avoid possibly stumbling people who thought it was bad… kinda like a “people are not ready for it” kind of thing. while my approach was more of a trying to bring the practice back into the light… redeem it in a sense. i understand how my preference might be risky but i’m thinking “when are people ever gonna be ready for it?”. so yeah… maybe in a few years i’ll look back and think the safer approach is better.

ok i think thats how i’m gonna end this post.