Considering the economic crisis, joblessness, political haranguing, media nitpicking, and a general sense of confusion in our country, how will your Christmas be? If you are in music ministry at a local church, you are probably up to your ears in Christmas presentations, rehearsals, children's programs, and huffing to keep up the hectic pace. Have you lost your sense of joy in the celebration? We are all busy and we are all faced with a new sense of hopelessness (or is it expectancy?) that is pervading our culture. This is nothing new.
Christ entered the Palestinian world in just such a time. The Jewish people longed for their promised Messiah and many thought that He would overthrow the oppressive Roman government to become the mightiest Ruler of earth. His kingdom turned out to be spiritual, at least for the time being, though our belief is that He will one day come again to possess the world in physical reality. Until then, we celebrate His advent some 2,000 years ago, though the way we go about celebrating it tends to stress us more than bless us.
Why not take a few moments now to meditate on the Advent of Christ? He came for you. All the songs, cantatas, children’s plays, and worship songs are about the one thing we often miss, the Being of God among us through Jesus Christ. Celebrate the Greatest Gift today!
Friday, December 19, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Worshiping as a True Team
I put together a ladies only praise team this week at my church in Chicago. We had a great service tonight and I was excited about how well they worked together. They are all fine singers, but I saw in them tonight the spark of leadership that can go beyond singing a song. Singing a song is far removed from authentic worship leading. I have spent a fair amount of time trying to get them to embrace their personalities and be free to be who God made them to be. They have embraced that concept to varying degrees.
It is counter-intuitive to think that the more we use our personalities the more we draw people's attention to God in worship leading, but it is true - God gave us our personalities to use them to attract people through us to Him. If we stand there self-conscious and lacking confidence in ourselves we actually distract people and hinder them from entering into worship because they're wondering if we're going to have a coronary before we finish the song. Think about your favorite artist. They are unique, confident, light years ahead of most of us in their ability to capture the attention and imagination of their audience. Then it is up to them whether or not they direct the praise and glory to God. We must learn to use our God-given personalities, including humor, to capture people's attention and imagination in worship leading and then focus them completely on God's redeeming love.
Shalom. Live. Love. Lead.
It is counter-intuitive to think that the more we use our personalities the more we draw people's attention to God in worship leading, but it is true - God gave us our personalities to use them to attract people through us to Him. If we stand there self-conscious and lacking confidence in ourselves we actually distract people and hinder them from entering into worship because they're wondering if we're going to have a coronary before we finish the song. Think about your favorite artist. They are unique, confident, light years ahead of most of us in their ability to capture the attention and imagination of their audience. Then it is up to them whether or not they direct the praise and glory to God. We must learn to use our God-given personalities, including humor, to capture people's attention and imagination in worship leading and then focus them completely on God's redeeming love.
Shalom. Live. Love. Lead.
Friday, November 14, 2008
This week at EFCN (Evangelical Free Church of Naperville) I have put together a ladie's praise team with four women that will lead our three services. I have accessed some wonderful Women of Faith arrangements along with some Travis Cottrell stuff that will be fabulous! The ladies are doing an excellent job and it is rewarding to me to be mentoring worship leaders here.
I miss my family while I am away. God is always teaching me, stretching me, and reminding me of His strength to lead and to pastor.
I hope to be better at blogging soon - thanks for reading!
Chiz
Live. Love. Lead
I miss my family while I am away. God is always teaching me, stretching me, and reminding me of His strength to lead and to pastor.
I hope to be better at blogging soon - thanks for reading!
Chiz
Live. Love. Lead
Monday, November 3, 2008
Election 2008 - Who Will Win in God's Eyes?
Tomorrow is an important day in the life of our country, but, then again, every day is important. While we make great distinctions in days, God sees the beginning, middle, and end of all history. All of time, a creature or created thing by God in itself, is held in His hands. Hebrews 13:8 tells us that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." Like a taut string in the fingers of God, time is stretched out before Him and nothing surprises Him, even elections.
Who will win tomorrow? The same people who are winning today - those who put their trust in God. Regardless of the political outcome of tomorrow's heated race between the Democrats and Republicans in the USA, every man, woman, boy, and girl who puts their trust in the Lord are guaranteed the victory of Jesus Christ over death, hell, and the grave. Now that's something worth voting for!
Be blessed. Live. Love. Lead.
Who will win tomorrow? The same people who are winning today - those who put their trust in God. Regardless of the political outcome of tomorrow's heated race between the Democrats and Republicans in the USA, every man, woman, boy, and girl who puts their trust in the Lord are guaranteed the victory of Jesus Christ over death, hell, and the grave. Now that's something worth voting for!
Be blessed. Live. Love. Lead.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Father's Business
Many of you know that I am serving at a church in a western Chicago suburb on the weekends. I am commuting from the Gulf Coast to the midwest each Thursday through Sunday to lead a wonderful group of musicians and singers. It is such a privilege to be asked by this church to be their interim worship leader, but I am impressed over and over that the servives we lead together are just the "results" of the week's rehearsals, e-mails, phone calls, and staff meetings. We snatch a few moments in the Word, we pray, we share our lives over coffee or a meal and THAT is the real business of the Father, the working of His Spirit in all the in-between moments.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Worship Organic
If you've ever noticed the organic section at the grocer you may have also noted the price difference. Organic stuff costs more than the processed foods and I'm guessing that's because the companies behind the organic foods are generally smaller and because organic foods aren't as popular as the microwavable spaghetti cans. It might just be that the organic growers are really proud of their stuff or that they're greedy, I don't know for sure. For the sake of this blog, though, let's just say that organic foods are more expensive to produce, ship, and position at the local grocer. I'm open to correction by anyone in the know.
The expense of organic foods vs. the chemically-laden-preservative-infused stuff that would still taste "fresh" long into the Great Tribulation serves as a fine metaphor for authentic worship. Real worship costs more than the popular stuff. Real worship bears with it the expense of sacrifice, selflessness, and servitude. Real worship engages the heart, soul, mind, and strength. Real worship has little to do with songs and a lot to do with soul. Authentic worship doesn't have a long shelf life because it is always current, always now, always alive and vital somehow in a way that the imitations can never bear. Real worship is the homemade pasta prima vera and the phony stuff Spaghetti-o's.
There's a great story in 1 Chronicles 21 about King David. He decided to take a census which the LORD had not ordered and it ticked God off. God sent an angel with a big sword (most scholars would say it was probably a theophany, or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ) to smite Israel and this is what happened:
16 David looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell facedown.
17 David said to God, "Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? O LORD my God, let your hand fall upon me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people."
18 Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 19 So David went up in obedience to the word that Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD.
20 While Araunah was threshing wheat, he turned and saw the angel; his four sons who were with him hid themselves. 21 Then David approached, and when Araunah looked and saw him, he left the threshing floor and bowed down before David with his face to the ground.
22 David said to him, "Let me have the site of your threshing floor so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped. Sell it to me at the full price."
23 Araunah said to David, "Take it! Let my lord the king do whatever pleases him. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all this."
24 But King David replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing."
25 So David paid Araunah six hundred shekels [c] of gold for the site. 26 David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. [d] He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering.
27 Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. 28 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there. 29 The tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the desert, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time on the high place at Gibeon. 30 But David could not go before it to inquire of God, because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD.
My point is in verse 24 where David said I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing. It just seems to me that people in church are happy to "take for the Lord" the offering that the worship leaders have prepared for their own sacrifice to God. In a way it is kind of like eating off of someone else's plate like the blind child Helen Keller did before Anne Sullivan got ahold of her.
Did you ever see in the movie The Miracle Worker how the young Helen would go around the dinner table grabbing peas and corn and whatever off of her family's plates and smashing it into her face like a wild child? That's the one scene I always think of when I think of Keller. Everyone just sat there ignoring her behavior because it was "normal". So what's so normal about people filing into church week after week and feeding off of the platform, grabbing at the praise songs on our plates like blind children starving for a morsel? How are we justified as God's family to ignore this behavior? Are we not the guiltier party for perpetuating such dependency?
Araunah had a good heart. He wanted to give the king what he needed to make God happy but David knew better. He knew that God looks upon the heart. He knew that this issue was personal, something between him and the LORD, and that he had to get jiggy with it and not screw around and make things worse. The sword of an angel makes for a bad hair day. So David insisted on paying full price for Araunah's field and oxen to sacrifice to God. God received his offering and answered with a bolt of fire upon the altar from heaven.
God doesn't get mad at us anymore. Our sins and blunders were placed on Christ at the cross and He was our ultimate sin offering. The point is that we are offering some pretty cheap offerings to Him in return for His amazing offering to us. He gives us eternal life and we give Him an hour on Sundays. He gives us total forgiveness of our sins and we gripe about having to stand up for three songs in a row at church. He pours life into us constantly and we have a hard time being happy about it because gas prices are high.
I'm voting for a return to worship organic. Enough of this performance stuff that is a complete hijacking of the song of the people. Enough of worship-as-church-growth-tool. Enough of pastors who are disengaged with the reality of worship, the reality of lament, and the reality of their people's struggling souls. And enough of worship leaders up on our platforms imitating the latest, greatest "worship star" they've heard on a CD, getting their own artist's itch scratched while we have to stand there and watch. Where is reality? Where is the full-throated song of the people in the ears of God? Who cares if the world is impressed with our worship show?
Worship organic may cost a little more, but in the end it tastes better and we are healthier for it.
Be encouraged. Live. Love. Lead.
The expense of organic foods vs. the chemically-laden-preservative-infused stuff that would still taste "fresh" long into the Great Tribulation serves as a fine metaphor for authentic worship. Real worship costs more than the popular stuff. Real worship bears with it the expense of sacrifice, selflessness, and servitude. Real worship engages the heart, soul, mind, and strength. Real worship has little to do with songs and a lot to do with soul. Authentic worship doesn't have a long shelf life because it is always current, always now, always alive and vital somehow in a way that the imitations can never bear. Real worship is the homemade pasta prima vera and the phony stuff Spaghetti-o's.
There's a great story in 1 Chronicles 21 about King David. He decided to take a census which the LORD had not ordered and it ticked God off. God sent an angel with a big sword (most scholars would say it was probably a theophany, or a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ) to smite Israel and this is what happened:
16 David looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell facedown.
17 David said to God, "Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? O LORD my God, let your hand fall upon me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people."
18 Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 19 So David went up in obedience to the word that Gad had spoken in the name of the LORD.
20 While Araunah was threshing wheat, he turned and saw the angel; his four sons who were with him hid themselves. 21 Then David approached, and when Araunah looked and saw him, he left the threshing floor and bowed down before David with his face to the ground.
22 David said to him, "Let me have the site of your threshing floor so I can build an altar to the LORD, that the plague on the people may be stopped. Sell it to me at the full price."
23 Araunah said to David, "Take it! Let my lord the king do whatever pleases him. Look, I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give all this."
24 But King David replied to Araunah, "No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing."
25 So David paid Araunah six hundred shekels [c] of gold for the site. 26 David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. [d] He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering.
27 Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. 28 At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there. 29 The tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the desert, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time on the high place at Gibeon. 30 But David could not go before it to inquire of God, because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD.
My point is in verse 24 where David said I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing. It just seems to me that people in church are happy to "take for the Lord" the offering that the worship leaders have prepared for their own sacrifice to God. In a way it is kind of like eating off of someone else's plate like the blind child Helen Keller did before Anne Sullivan got ahold of her.
Did you ever see in the movie The Miracle Worker how the young Helen would go around the dinner table grabbing peas and corn and whatever off of her family's plates and smashing it into her face like a wild child? That's the one scene I always think of when I think of Keller. Everyone just sat there ignoring her behavior because it was "normal". So what's so normal about people filing into church week after week and feeding off of the platform, grabbing at the praise songs on our plates like blind children starving for a morsel? How are we justified as God's family to ignore this behavior? Are we not the guiltier party for perpetuating such dependency?
Araunah had a good heart. He wanted to give the king what he needed to make God happy but David knew better. He knew that God looks upon the heart. He knew that this issue was personal, something between him and the LORD, and that he had to get jiggy with it and not screw around and make things worse. The sword of an angel makes for a bad hair day. So David insisted on paying full price for Araunah's field and oxen to sacrifice to God. God received his offering and answered with a bolt of fire upon the altar from heaven.
God doesn't get mad at us anymore. Our sins and blunders were placed on Christ at the cross and He was our ultimate sin offering. The point is that we are offering some pretty cheap offerings to Him in return for His amazing offering to us. He gives us eternal life and we give Him an hour on Sundays. He gives us total forgiveness of our sins and we gripe about having to stand up for three songs in a row at church. He pours life into us constantly and we have a hard time being happy about it because gas prices are high.
I'm voting for a return to worship organic. Enough of this performance stuff that is a complete hijacking of the song of the people. Enough of worship-as-church-growth-tool. Enough of pastors who are disengaged with the reality of worship, the reality of lament, and the reality of their people's struggling souls. And enough of worship leaders up on our platforms imitating the latest, greatest "worship star" they've heard on a CD, getting their own artist's itch scratched while we have to stand there and watch. Where is reality? Where is the full-throated song of the people in the ears of God? Who cares if the world is impressed with our worship show?
Worship organic may cost a little more, but in the end it tastes better and we are healthier for it.
Be encouraged. Live. Love. Lead.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Brontosaurus for Breakfast
It's probably not a good thing to wake up teary.
I'm pretty sure it would be better to wake up feeling chipper, bright, alive. Maybe we should all float out of bed and twirl around the room humming a Disney theme like Snow White as the little forest animals help us smooth the bedclothes, sweep the cottage floor and fling wide the shutters for a shimmering new day, but that hasn't been my experience yet.
I woke up this morning feeling a whole lot more like Grumpy, ready to snap at anyone or anything that happened to stumble into my swarthy path. My breath reeks, my feet and back hurt, and my eyes are refusing to focus. I feel about a half-million years old, like a brontosaurus that somehow woke up in my house this morning, transported miraculously from the paleolithic era to the 21st Century. I haven't had my second shot of java yet so that may be half the problem. Or it might be the seemingly immense battles I'm facing right now that make the bed so appealing despite all the little forest animals waiting outside to play.
Sometimes I feel like my life has been one giant mood swing. I can feel victorious in Christ one minute and low as the fortieth ring of Dante's Inferno the next. Life can be one big party or one big misery in about a nano-second. Anti-depressants don't help artistic types all that much, either. They might smooth the edges a little but they can also take away the depths of feeling that feed our creativity. Some of those meds could turn Michelangelo into an accountant. Too much alcohol just feeds the darkness as many of the great writers found out to their detriment.
The only consistent answer I've found so far is to feel whatever I need to feel and go on with life knowing that whatever I feel right now, good or bad, will probably change in about five minutes. I am like the weather in Portland. I'm just a feeling-based person. So sue me. I am wired intrinsically to my emotions and, for the life of me, cannot extricate myself from the ups and downs of my silly little insides. The good news is that God loves me enough to have made David, Asaph, and the other psalm writers open up their insides long ago so I wouldn't feel so bad, at least for the five minutes or so that I read them.
In Psalm 69:1-4 David writes out of his anguish (and I'm sure stinky bad breath because he had to hide in caves a lot):
David had some very real enemies. His own son, Absolom, wanted to cut his head off. He was a warrior-king who felt things at a very deep emotional level, like me, and he wasn't afraid to wear a tunic and play a harp. He kicked butt and wrote songs. So far my worst enemies are in my head and my teen-aged daughter still wants me to drive her to the mall. I don't own a tunic or an ephod but I do have some baggy jeans. I'm just learning that it's okay to sing a lament or two along with the happy-clappy praise stuff that can momentarily lift any of us out of the doldrums.
Maybe that's the real lesson here. God is big enough to hear the praise and take the complaints. He doesn't love us more when we're happy than when we're sad. He is with us in the good and the bad, when we want to love Him and when we can't understand why He doesn't seem to be listening. He sees us when we're on the mountaintop and when we're hiding in a cave somewhere fearing for our lives. Maybe it's just okay to feel what we feel and remember that Jesus was well acquainted with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet without sin."
I was tempted to stay in the bed today. I may be tempted to play the part of Grumpy the Brontosaurus Dwarf all day if things don't seem to be going my way or if I don't seem to be getting what I want. I may snap and bite at my loved ones if I don't think life is fair and I may even complain to God. If I do, at least I will be in good company. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow feeling a little more like Happy, Doc, or Sneezy. In the meantime, brontosaurus for breakfast, anyone?
I'm pretty sure it would be better to wake up feeling chipper, bright, alive. Maybe we should all float out of bed and twirl around the room humming a Disney theme like Snow White as the little forest animals help us smooth the bedclothes, sweep the cottage floor and fling wide the shutters for a shimmering new day, but that hasn't been my experience yet.
I woke up this morning feeling a whole lot more like Grumpy, ready to snap at anyone or anything that happened to stumble into my swarthy path. My breath reeks, my feet and back hurt, and my eyes are refusing to focus. I feel about a half-million years old, like a brontosaurus that somehow woke up in my house this morning, transported miraculously from the paleolithic era to the 21st Century. I haven't had my second shot of java yet so that may be half the problem. Or it might be the seemingly immense battles I'm facing right now that make the bed so appealing despite all the little forest animals waiting outside to play.
Sometimes I feel like my life has been one giant mood swing. I can feel victorious in Christ one minute and low as the fortieth ring of Dante's Inferno the next. Life can be one big party or one big misery in about a nano-second. Anti-depressants don't help artistic types all that much, either. They might smooth the edges a little but they can also take away the depths of feeling that feed our creativity. Some of those meds could turn Michelangelo into an accountant. Too much alcohol just feeds the darkness as many of the great writers found out to their detriment.
The only consistent answer I've found so far is to feel whatever I need to feel and go on with life knowing that whatever I feel right now, good or bad, will probably change in about five minutes. I am like the weather in Portland. I'm just a feeling-based person. So sue me. I am wired intrinsically to my emotions and, for the life of me, cannot extricate myself from the ups and downs of my silly little insides. The good news is that God loves me enough to have made David, Asaph, and the other psalm writers open up their insides long ago so I wouldn't feel so bad, at least for the five minutes or so that I read them.
In Psalm 69:1-4 David writes out of his anguish (and I'm sure stinky bad breath because he had to hide in caves a lot):
"Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to
my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail
looking for my God.
Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal."
David had some very real enemies. His own son, Absolom, wanted to cut his head off. He was a warrior-king who felt things at a very deep emotional level, like me, and he wasn't afraid to wear a tunic and play a harp. He kicked butt and wrote songs. So far my worst enemies are in my head and my teen-aged daughter still wants me to drive her to the mall. I don't own a tunic or an ephod but I do have some baggy jeans. I'm just learning that it's okay to sing a lament or two along with the happy-clappy praise stuff that can momentarily lift any of us out of the doldrums.
Maybe that's the real lesson here. God is big enough to hear the praise and take the complaints. He doesn't love us more when we're happy than when we're sad. He is with us in the good and the bad, when we want to love Him and when we can't understand why He doesn't seem to be listening. He sees us when we're on the mountaintop and when we're hiding in a cave somewhere fearing for our lives. Maybe it's just okay to feel what we feel and remember that Jesus was well acquainted with our weaknesses. Hebrews 4:15 says, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet without sin."
I was tempted to stay in the bed today. I may be tempted to play the part of Grumpy the Brontosaurus Dwarf all day if things don't seem to be going my way or if I don't seem to be getting what I want. I may snap and bite at my loved ones if I don't think life is fair and I may even complain to God. If I do, at least I will be in good company. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow feeling a little more like Happy, Doc, or Sneezy. In the meantime, brontosaurus for breakfast, anyone?
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