Quite often, commenters here ask the question why we even care about what the various Armchair Mafia sites write, or why we spend time debunking their attacks.  It’s a valid question.  It’s something I ask myself, and honestly, sometimes I think it’s probably better to just let a fool go off into his or her folly.  But then I see something they write, and it’s so much in error, I feel that it needs a response.

Take for example, this rant.  Now at the start of the post, we are told,

The Right Reverend Nick Baines, Bishop of Croyden, has said that Beatles songs are as likely to explain Christianity as the Bible which he calls, “banal.” Rock songs, he says, are more effective at explaining Christianity.

That’s a pretty serious charge.  I would be concerned if a minister actually called the BIble “banal”.  So I follow the link to the original article, and what do I find?  I see that the Right Reverend Baines actually said nothing of the sort.  What he actually said is the following:

“The Bible is an amazing collection of books that we’ve allowed to become banal. For many people it is a closed book and asking them to read it is a lost cause, which is a tragedy.”

That is a very different statement than calling the Bible “banal”.  The Right Reverend Baines is simply stating that the Church has not done a good job at communicating the truths of Scripture to modern generations, and it’s tragic.  The truth is that many people see the Bible as little more than an obsolete book, and to them it has become “devoid of freshness or originality; hackneyed“.  So perhaps a secular songwriter, playwright, or poet will happen to ask questions that are really on people’s minds.  And perhaps we as Christians can take those questions and point to the narrative of Scripture that gives answers or comfort for those questions.

Actually, isn’t a primary job of a minister to listen to the questions people are asking?  Isn’t a true shepherd responsive to the calls of the sheep?  Perhaps the reason so many people have little use for the Church is that what was meant to be a vital and engaging relationship has turned into a one-way conversation.  Throughout the Gospels, Jesus never looked down upon someone with a genuine question.  He took time to respond to those whom society shunned.  He didn’t let religion dictate what the right questions were.

So perhaps instead of insisting we have the answers for all the questions that nobody is asking, maybe we should take a moment to listen.  We might be surprised what we hear.

For your Friday afternoon entertainment (submitted by numerous people here, to my email, and – by Bob Hyatt – to my Facebook page):

The beautiful people, all send their excuses:
(Real estate and sex lives, livestock and ex-wives)

But the poor are coming, the lame are running
In their sleazy clothes and orthopedic shoes
There’s a harelip spokesman shouting out the news

“Come to the banquet at the world’s end!”

There’s a string ensemble, and the King’s court jester
Telling parables and big jokes, to mongoloids and old folks

The blind are seeing, the dead are breathing
And the mummies dance in geriatric style
The amputees are rolling down the aisles

“Come to the banquet at the world’s end!”

Candlelight and party hats, duck and pheasant under glass
Aluminum walkers, thin white canes, caviar and pink champagne
The bride and the groom waltz on
Club foot lane at the banquet at the world’s end
The banquet at the world’s end
The banquet at the world’s end

Say the beautiful people (the poor are coming)
“We’ll live with the lights out (the lame are running)
Leave us alone now because (the blind are seeing)
Hell feels like home now” (the dead are breathing)

Meanwhile…

But the poor are coming, the lame are running
In their sleazy clothes and orthopedic shoes
There’s a harelip spokesman shouting out the news

“Come to the banquet at the world’s end!”
“Come to the banquet at the world’s end!”
“Come to the banquet at the world’s end!”

from the album “MotorCycle”
Words and Music by Terry Taylor
©1993 Twitchen Vibes Music / Brainstorm Artists Int’l. (ASCAP)
Matthew 22:1-14

My wife and I attended the midnight show of The Dark Knight, several weeks ago, and I have to say that Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker still has me a bit perturbed. In discussing the movie with my Christian friends, we’ve all recognized how this particular movie villain seems to be much more malevolent and inherently scary than most others – even apart from Ledger’s eerie performance.

In discussing the movie with my non-Christian friends, I have found a particular opening that not only brings religion into the discussion, but has opened up follow-up conversation, as well.

Chaos and Order

In Genesis 1, we read:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

In Hebrew, the phrase tohu u’vohu is sometimes translated “formless and empty”, and this is its only appearance in the Bible. Before everything was created by God, the earth was chaos – formless and empty. In the picture painted in Genesis, this chaos – this formlessness and emptiness was contained within the deep (theum, which is literally translated “abyss”). In fact, the Hebrew word for the abyss (theum) comes from the Hebrew root for chaos (theu).

Chaos is the absence of everything, a vacuum. In scientific terms, chaos is to God as cold is to heat. There is no such thing as “cold” – “cold” is just the absence of heat. In the same way, there is no such thing as chaos – chaos is the absence of God.

And so it was that God created order from the chaos – He created everything from nothing. (To the ancient Jews, the seas represented the abyss – chaos – which was why so few would venture out onto the sea, and why so many superstitions were part of it.)

In the Beginning

In the Hebrew mind, the opposite of God is not Satan. To view it as such is an outgrowth of Babylonian dualism. In fact, though, to the Hebrew mind, the opposite of God is chaos. In the poetry of Genesis 1, we see the overarching theme of God’s creation, as ‘deep calls out to deep’, where God first creates and separates from nothing on days 1-3:

Day 1: Light and Darkness
Day 2: Sky and Water
Day 3: Water, Land and Vegetation

Then, in days 4-6, God brings forth creation from creation, paralleling Days 1-3:

Day 4: Sun, Moon and Stars
Day 5: Fish and Birds
Day 6: Animals and Man

And then, on the seventh day, God rests, and hands the tasks of creating from creation from creation to mankind – to be fruitful and multiply and to continue to bring order to creation.

And so, in the Hebrew mind, God created from nothing, filling the chaos with order. He then further creates from His creation – further eradicating chaos. Finally, he gives man the job of working and bringing order to all that He created – fully eliminating the chaos.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recent discussions on the Resurrection have brought to mind a song that was written by the late Mark Heard called “Treasure of the Broken Land”. Heard wrote the song shortly before his death in 1992, and it appears on his album entitled Satellite Sky.  This is one of those songs that causes an almost visceral reaction in me, as I nearly am brought to tears everytime I hear it.  Not sad tears, but tears of joy and expectation.  I believe the line, “parched earth give up your captive ones” really captures the spirit of what Paul was getting at when he wrote this passage in Romans 8:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

That which is dead will be made new.  We as Christians have tasted the firstfruits of the resurrection, but we are waiting for it to fully be revealed.  To this we say, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

The video:

Treasure Of The Broken Land

I see you now and then in dreams
Your voice sounds just like it used to
I know you better than I knew you then
All I can say is I love you

I thought our days were commonplace
Thought they would number in millions
Now there’s only the aftertaste
Of circumstance that can’t pass this way again

Treasure of the broken land
Parched earth, give up your captive ones
Waiting wind of Gabriel
Blow soon upon the hollow bones

I saw the city at its tortured worst
And you were outside the walls there
You were relieved of a lifelong thirst
I was dry at the fountain

I knew that you could see my shame
But you were eyeless and sparing
I awoke when you called my name
I felt the curtain tearing

Treasure of the broken land
Parched earth give up your captive ones
Waiting wind of Gabriel
Blow soon upon the hollow bones

I can melt the clock hands down
But only in my memory
Nobody gets the second chance to be the friend they meant to be

I see you now and then in dreams
Your voice sounds just like it used to
I believe I will hear it again
God how I love you

Treasure of the broken land
Parched earth give up your captive ones
Waiting wind of Gabriel
Blow soon upon the hollow bones

A streamed version of the song by Steve Taylor’s band, Chagall Guevera is available here.

Hey there – I’m back in Indiana trying to catch up from being gone the past 10 days.

I’ve been with some friends working at an art & music camp for The Legacy in Ignacio, Colorado (you can see some pics here). One of the classes I co-taught was dealing with video and animation. Below is one of the projects the kids worked on, with music by Andrew Peterson:

All in all, it was a great week, and I’m already prepping for next year. It will be June 8-12, 2009, if anyone would like to help teach/assist/cook/etc.

A couple years ago, while I was teaching at an art & music camp on the Rez in North Dakota, several of the other volunteers and I (particularly the guy who hosts this website) decided to put together a music video in our spare time (primarily an evening break).

The song we chose was from a disc of songs submitted to Word Records by amateur acts (see this story for links to several of them) that never made it (if you listen to them, you’ll understand – particularly this one, whose chorus will put you in stitches).

Below is the result of our ‘hard work’:

While it contains a whole lot of ‘in-jokes’ from the week (which are never nearly as funny when explained), it served its purposes as some funny entertainment, and it also reminded us that sometimes we take ourselves way too seriously. (For anyone wondering, I’m the dude in the pool with a guitar)

As I get ready to head out to do another camp with this group of brothers and sisters – along with some more I’ve not met yet – and as I dust off the ‘demo album’, seeing the video was just another reminder of how sometimes it’s just good to take the time to laugh at yourself…

In a recent post over at Slice, Ingrid returns to a common theme – music. Her take is that certain styles of music are acceptable and certain styles are not – and this seems to apply to everyone. She offers a polemic by her husband to make her point.

The essay by Tom Schlueter reminded me of the comments by John MacArthur regarding the wearing of suits in church. On the one hand both the opinion of MacArthur and the opinion of Schlueter make sense… they even have some validity. Yet the shared flaw that renders their opinions incapable of being applied universally is their ethnocentric position.

In other words, their instructions may have value – in their narrow context. The problem is they both elevate their preferences to universal codes that all must follow.

For example: Tom Schlueter gives two examples of purely instrumental brass music – in the style of swing and fanfare, respectively. In the first “The trumpets led the brass in a clear call to listeners: get up and dance” the other calls the listeners to “Come and worship God.”

His conclusion: The [fanfare] brass in the second example tells us there is royalty present. The percussion at the end of the fanfare speaks not of dance and flesh, but of honor and respect and reverence. Different message entirely. And he is right – swing brass bids us come and dance, fanfare brass bids us recognize authority and honor.

But his application is flawed. He rightly differentiates the two biddings, but then sets up a false dichotomy – that honor and respect are valid modes of worship, but celebration and dance are of the flesh. His conclusion of swing, if used as a call to worship would be “Get up and dance… Women should start flaunting their stuff in front of men on the dance floor. This would not be worship at all, but rather a gross insult to the Almighty.”

I’ve been in worship services where people danced – I doubt God was insulted.

The problem is not one of style of music, but context and assumption. First the assumption, Schlueter first assumes dance is fleshly and swing calls women to flaunt their stuff – this I will summarily dismiss. The context is worthy of discussion.

Tom Schlueter uses a 9-11 memorial as an example of appropriate music – solemn music would be appropriate, a Broadway tune… not so. I agree. And if the point of worship is the “honor and respect and reverence” of God, then a fanfare might work. Where he fails is the recognition that maybe the point of worship is (at times) to dance and celebrate. And in this swing may work well.

If Schlueter had stuck to an argument that music should evoke appropriate responses given the situation of worship, then I could have agreed. But he could not, he had to insert his cultural version of what is appropriate in style and overlay those expectations on us all.

When I checked Slice this morning, I was stunned to hear that Granger Church had flipped the audience the bird during their easter service. This was something that I had to see for myself, so I checked out the video. I was a little disappointed, as I really was in need of some good drama to jump start my day.

The video in question was simply a new fad in YouTube videos, where lyrics to a song are drawn on fingers and then shown moving with the music. In this case, the word “make” was written on the middle finger, and was raised when the word was sung. This was not the performer “giving fellow Christians, and the Lord, the finger”, as Ingrid would suggest. It would be very hard to watch that video think that the intent was to flip the audience off.

Now, could Granger Church have used some tact in making this art piece? Certainly. At some point in rehearsals, someone should have said “hey, someone might get confused with the middle finger being held up alone.” But for Ingrid to say this is obscene, and assume that they were doing this to flip the audience off, is rediculous. I sometimes wonder how much time the ODMs spend poking around on the internet to find one headline that will make them the best Christian tabloid of the day. There is a big difference between having the spirit of discernment, and getting up in everyone’s business.

Oh, and she never mentioned the words of the pastor following the art piece… “I have good news, Jesus Christ is alive, now and forever more, the crucified on has risen from the grave, and he has ascended to the right hand of God, and he is the sovereign king and lord of all who live and all who have ever lived. He is worthy of our praise.” Funny thing… never heard about his extremely biblical sermon from that morning on Slice.

Last Sunday morning, one of my friends told me to look-up a video she’d seen on GodTube, which I got around to doing.

As an ex-theater major (turned chemical engineer – go figure), I have always been wary of the use of drama in corporate worship settings. In some ways, I think it has been the quality of thought, writing and production often absent – and the feeling of being ‘tacked on’ or ‘disconnected’ from the service, as a whole – that has led to this apprehension.

However, I found myself surprised and moved by this one:

As I hear more and more in my workplace about the power of images over words in current culture, I wonder if well-done elements like this one might have more of a place for effective outreach – when combined with sound teaching, of course – as we look to teach and evangelize, particularly youth…

The important thing, I think, though is to be wary of what we lose in visual presentation, aware of what we gain by it, and that we supplement the visual/experiential with, at least, the bare minimum of exposition to interpret the visual ‘narrative’…

In my time as a Training & Development professional, I learned that one of the ‘rules of thumb’ in the trade is called the “70-20-10 rule”. Teens and adults tend to learn and retain based upon: 70% experience, 20% relationships and 10% expositional/didactic teaching. So, the key to training people is to leverage the 90% that is not in the ‘classroom’ or reading – the use of music and art taps into the 70%…

When you look back at the church, prior to the invention of the printing press and prior to the ability to easily duplicate images, the use of imagery within the architecture and traditions of the church was much more prevalent than the past several hundred years. The use of illumination, as in the Book of Kells, and the use of iconography were ways in which the church used images to convey the truths of the Bible. Because most of the people could not read nor understand Latin, these methods of teaching, learning and experience were effective. However, when worshipers started behaving in ways that worshiped the icons and venerated the images, their usefulness was outstripped. The icons, in and of themselves, were not evil, but for some, they were being used in a way that was so.

In the same way, I see churches who use artistic expressions, displaying truths of Christ, as something that can be very helpful – particularly in light of the ways adults, especially, learn.

The danger lies in idolizing the methods and missing the message.

To demonize the method or to insist the message be expressed in a singular manner is not the proper response. Instead, it takes the involvement of the local shepherd to gauge the pulse of his sheep, and to make adjustments accordingly…