Praise that's Premature: Do we praise too soon?

This article appeared in Leadeshipjournal.net and was sent to me by one of my assistant pastors. I found it very interesting and hope that you do too

by Shane Hipps

I scanned the congregation as we finished our third song extolling the wonders of God and our joy for all God has done. As we started the fourth song with the same spirit of energetic celebration, I glimpsed a friend, sitting in the back, who had told me that week that his wife had cheated on him and wanted a divorce.

At that moment the lyrics kicked in, and we started singing joyful thanks for God's abundant blessings. The words I was singing suddenly felt forced, false, and even mocking. I had to spend the rest of the song looking away from my friend, who stood with his mouth shut, staring out the window.

After the service I approached him and said, "I was thinking about you the entire service; it must have been painful sitting through some of the songs."

"Yeah," he said. "I'm not sure this is a good time for me to attend church. It is painful to observe celebration and not be able to join. It accentuates my loneliness."

I left thinking there was something very wrong with this situation.

Worship is often equated with joy and celebration. It's a kind of pep rally to inspire thanksgiving and excitement about who God is. While this is a legitimate aspect of worship, it is incomplete.

This comes into full relief when we consider the experience of my friend and even more so when we read the book of Psalms as a record of ancient worship and a rich resource for our worship today.

An important pattern in the psalms is that they repeatedly employ a narrative arc, a movement from grief and lamentation to celebration and joy. This pattern is strikingly absent in many worship services today. We tend to deny our suffering in favor of celebration.

Perhaps this is because we mistakenly believe that to acknowledge suffering might mean we are ungrateful or lacking in faith. More likely it is because grief is an inefficient and unpleasant emotion that conflicts with the efficient and entertaining biases of today's culture.

This repression of our heaviest emotions is tragic, and over time it leads to an inauthentic and unhealthy spiritual life.

Authenticity and integrity in worship means expressing both lament and praise. Each element completes the other. Without lament, praise is little more than shallow sentimentality and a denial of life's struggles and sin. Without praise, lament is a denial of hope and grace, both of which are central to our life of faith and to God's promises.

To value one over the other is like suggesting that breathing in is more important than breathing out.

This is not only an issue of authenticity and integrity. It cuts to the heart of hospitality and pastoral sensitivity. For those coming to a worship service immersed in pain, celebratory praise takes on a mocking tone that excludes them. They are unable to join honestly in these choruses.

By incorporating expressions of sorrow, pain, and grief into our worship, as the psalms do, the hurting are ushered into God's presence with honesty. At the same time, the rest of the congregation is reminded of the suffering community gathered in their midst. They are invited to weep with those who are weeping. By honoring their pain, we acknowledge those who are suffering and affirm them in their grief.

Yet worship is not complete without turning to praise. When pain has been acknowledged, those who suffer are invited beyond their pain to consider God's faithfulness in the midst of suffering and even to rejoice with those who are rejoicing.

These opportunities for lament and praise are not simply about meeting personal needs. They are missional practices of authenticity, hospitality, and pastoral care.

Shane Hipps is lead pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Takers

I received an email from a ministry friend and coworker I hadn’t seen in 10 years. I was excited to see what he was up to, what was going on in his life, and if he continued in full time ministry. In the email he said nothing about his family or ministry, just that he had an exciting new business opportunity he wanted to share with me.

Several years ago, I had another friend who branched out and started a church. I helped him financially get his ministry on his feet. We stayed in contact and prayed for a while. But when we stopped supporting,. I don’t hear from him much

I was the chaplain for a sports organization. The director said I was one of his best friends. Our church fixed lunch for the team members ever Wednesday. Last fall, after two years of working with the organization, I advised him that because I am in the middle of some demanding changes at my church, and a building project, I would be unable to continue as chaplain. I haven’t heard from him since the day I had to resign.

Takers. The world is full of them. What is a taker? One who takes or takes up something –LIKE SPACE!

We take from church, and we take from each other until the relationship is used up. We stay close to God as long as we feel He keeps providing for our needs. I once knew a lady who claimed to be a follower of Christ and had her eye on a house to buy. She pray God would give it to her. When it sold to some one else,, she became angry with God and left the faith.

Some years back, I counseled a couple. They had financial issues so we, the church paid their way to family camps, marriage women’s and men’s retreat. We also gave them money to help with rent and electric bills. He is now a quadriplegic having been paralyzed as the result of an accident due to cocaine. When he saw me a few years later, he was certain to assure me that although we were helping him at the time of the accident, he never used a cent of the churches money to buy cocaine (how reassuring)

The most miserable Christians I know are the Takers. They take from church, people, pastors, God, until there is nothing left to take and move on and begin the process all over again, with a new pastor and a new congregation . The most healthy Christians I know are those who have learned to be givers. Jesus said, In Matthew 16:25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find.

Are you a Taker? Or have you learned to give? In your church community when was the last time you volunteered to help? Used to be 20% of the people in church did 80% of the work. Now days is 10% of the people are doing 90% of the work. When you see a starving child’s face on the television and an organization asking you to help, do you sit comfortably in your chair staring at the image of the child, coldly ignoring the plea of the announcer? Do you find yourself at church disturbed because when the pastor speaks “You’re not being fed?” Do you now how ridiculous that is and what a burden you place on your pastor? Learn to feed your self!

If you can say yes to any of these questions, you might be a taker. Learn to be a contributor, a giver.

In John 13 Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. He said, I have given you an example—follow it.

And what does it say of Jesus who was a giver, a servant? It says in Heb 12:1

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside

every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that

is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy

that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right

hand of the throne of God”

John 15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your j may be full.

Psalm 29 “give unto the Lord the glory due His Name

Learn to be a giver and not just a taker

Where the guys aren’t:
Why are men vanishing from the pews and pulpits?

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER When I went to school, boys wore pants (never jeans) and girls wore dresses or skirts. My elementary school had a boys’ entrance and girls’ entrance. The playground was divided in two — boys on one side, girls on the other. The boys’ “half” was considerably larger. Admittedly, the dividing line was a bit vague and at the far end of the yard, I sometimes played hopscotch with the girls. United Church Moderator Rt. Rev. David Giuliano says “A lot of things leave men feeling excluded and silenced and not valued.” Photo by Hugh Wesley I was too young to notice, but photos from that era show that churches were similarly divided: women ran the kitchen; men ran everything else. Boys still had the bigger playground. My, how things have changed. Boys and girls now play together and they enter schools through the same door. Perhaps that’s as good a metaphor for the sexual revolution as any. Men and women now enter universities and the job market through the same doors. The church has also changed. Women still run the kitchen, but now they run everything else, too. In my experience in pastoral ministry, women outnumber men on most church boards, councils and committees. After 2,000 years of men running the church, it’s difficult to argue that women shouldn’t have their -song: “Where have all the young men gone?” And the old ones? And the middle-aged ones? On a typical Sunday morning in our congregation, women outnumber men three to one — and by United Church standards, that’s a lot of men. In the past 40 years, women have radically redefined themselves and their place in the world. It hasn’t been easy, and in the process of making long-overdue gains, they have changed the landscape of gender relations. The old maps have had to be redrawn. Some men have adapted well to this new lay of the land. Others, lacking familiar landmarks, have lost their way. It used to be, when Sean Connery was the only James Bond, that a man knew what was expected of him. Suddenly, masculinity is an uncertain quality. The movie studios can’t seem to settle on a new Bond, bouncing from glowering Timothy Dalton to pretty Pierce Brosnan to tragic Daniel Craig. In the same way, a whole generation of men have gone looking for themselves. But they are not looking in church. Somehow, spirituality has become a feminine attribute. The out-migration of men coincides with the years that women began to assert themselves in church and society. Was the church such a boys’ club that men couldn’t bear to see it become co-ed? That seems an unlikely explanation, given that all-male service organizations have experienced a similar loss of membership over the same time frame. The male diaspora also corresponds to the rise of female ministers. Over the past five years, women comprised fully 70 percent of those entering ordered or lay ministries in the United Church. Many children encounter their first male teacher before their first male minister. Is it that men do not tolerate being preached to by women? An even more cynical view is that the loss of men matches the church’s loss of relevance. If church membership and committee work impress neither prospective employers nor the eligible young woman in the next office, then what’s the point? Evangelical churches seem to fare better. Is it because they concentrate on young families? Because they provide the kind of hierarchical structure men are said to prefer? Or because, with a “wives, obey your husbands” theology, they offer a refuge where men can still pretend to retain their power of old? Questions are more plentiful than answers, but it seems certain that the reasons for men’s absence in liberal churches are varied and complex.

"Cell" Groups Terrorize Iran

This article ran in Fox this morning. I thought it was interesting to note that above all the rhetoric coming out of Tehran about the unrighteous Americans, Iranians deal with the same morality issues we do in the West. It goes to show of the universality of the sin nature and that no system will ever succeed at transforming a pig into a poodle!

A 'Celler's' Market for Information in Iran

Thursday, June 14, 2007

By John Moody

TEHRAN — The most talked about confrontation in Tehran these days began normally enough. A young woman walking down the street with a headscarf (sliding a little too far down?) hiding only half her hair was accosted by the morality police, called a slut and told to cover up.

The incident became interesting when the girl responded with a Bruce Lee-like whoop and aimed a kick at her tormentor’s midsection. The girl knew martial arts, as she convincingly demonstrated to the approving cheers of the crowd that gathered around her to watch the whupping.

What made it famous? Someone recorded it on a cell phone. Within hours, it was local legend.

Zohre, a well-known actress, decided to imitate Paris Hilton by taping herself having sex. What she didn’t know was that her partner recorded the event, uploaded the steamy imagery to his cell phone, Bluetoothed it from one corner of Tehran to the other and put Zohre’s good name and career in jeopardy.

Nor did the popular and outwardly pious religious singer named Helali expect video of him entertaining two young girls without headscarves to become a backstreet hit. Today, Helali is singing the blues.

Islamic rule in Iran has withstood 28 years of Western outrage, economic boycotts and careful disdain by Iranians who long for more personal freedom. But the regime might not survive the cell phone, which Iranians are turning from a means of communication into a means — for symmetry? — of political protest.

Nearly every young Iranian — in a land where 70 percent of the population of 73 million is under 30 — owns a mobile phone. And every day tens of millions use them to send text messages, pictures and videos to their friends.

"No one uses a landline anymore," says Mossegh, a 20-something clothing salesman. "First of all, most of them don’t work. And anyway, I communicate with my friends by SMS, not calls. Calling just isn’t cool."

Set, who works in an electronics store in northern Tehran, says all his customers want the Nokia N95, because of its high quality camera, which can take and transmit pictures and videos of startling quality.

Pornography, of course, is the favored commodity, even in this Islamic theocracy. Knots of snickering teenage boys stare slack-jawed at the images of naked, writhing bodies they have downloaded, then exchange the images on their cell phones at coffee bars and pizza shops.

Other, less prurient Iranians belong to a chain mail of jokes about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose irregular hygiene habits are the stuff of endless banter. "I walked in the ocean with just my socks on," begins one joke making the rounds. "Now our talented Iranian scientists are figuring out how to replace all the water."

When the country’s soccer team was knocked out of the World Cup in the first round last year, a torrent of angry fans attributed the loss to the team’s sexual deficiencies. Ethnic minorities like Turks and Arabs are the victims of crude innuendo and puns, such as one suggesting the classic curving Turkish nose has more than olfactory purposes.

But more than anything, the rise of shared videos alarms the government, to the degree that private service providers can no longer offer MMS — multimedia services — until appropriate filters are developed.

That won’t stop bawdy file sharers like Balthazar, who owns an impressive collection of clips. "Haven’t these idiots ever heard of Bluetooth?" he asks, before offering a Photoshopped video of Ahmadinejad at a circus. Hint: The president is not sitting in the audience.

John Moody is executive vice president of Fox News.

Worshiping at the Altar of "Me"

Matthew18 is Jesus response to Peter’s question “who is greatest in the kingdom of God”. In Jesus usual “out of the flow” with conventional methods, He says the characteristics of greatness in God’s kingdom are the humility of a child, vss 1-15, and the ability to forgive like God, vss 21-37. Since we were designed to be dependent upon God and connected to each other, it’s easy to see why Jesus would extol these two qualities as great in God’s kingdom. But why are these two great characteristics so lacking in our churches and lacking in our lives? Jesus tells us. Well, sandwiched between these two great qualities, is what makes acting humbly or forgiving unconditionally so difficult. See if you can figure it out

Matthew 18:15"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. f he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Did you figure it out? Here’s a hint: It’s what got Lucifer kicked out of heaven and Adam expelled from the Garden. It’s the middle letter in the words SIN and PRIDE. You’ve got it; Freud’s “ego”…me…mine. It’s a disease that has afflicted all of us since Adam; the dreaded “I” disease.

In this postmodern age in which we live, it is the self, not God that is at the core of our spirituality. The tune played over and over like a broken record is “Just love yourself a little bit more”. The search for truth has been replaced with the search for self.

Don’t believe me? In many churches we worship “I” in our song services. The popular songs are those with some sort of kick back to the worshiper. For instance, I’m trading my sorrows; I’m trading my pain. I’m trading them all for the joy of the Lord. Now I believe there is Joy in following Jesus but what’s the focus of that song? Me, I. And while I song that song, and will continue to, when it is lumped together with a bunch of other songs we call worship what we are communicating to the worshiper is “Don’t give God glory praise because He’s worth it but give to God to get something back. In this case joy.

We talk about ourselves and call it prayer. “Lord”, we say, “help me out today”. Lord, strengthen my body and give me endurance” Or “Lord, give me the wisdom to face this challenge”. One famous author wakes up every morning and prays this praye,r “Help me, help me, help me”. Now I am not suggesting that we abandon intercessory prayer. We need all the help we can get. But the model prayer should be one that glorifies God above self.

Like a junkie we are hooked on “I” and we’ll worship and sacrifice at the altar of self until we are intoxicated by the fumes of their own egos

Author Len Sweet says the preoccupation with self and identity is a recent phenomenon. Up until about 150 years ago we didn’t really have “identity issues”. For the most part “self” was inherited The “I” was defined by your family, your tribe, or your socio-economic standing and people made the best of their predetermined lot in life.

Today that notion is as antiquated as the out house and pumping water by hand from a well. The very thought is deplorable; Neanderthal, because today we get to design and manufacture our own “self”. For the first time in history, the “I” can author itself and write it’s own life story. Today it’s not the “the self made man” that matters, but “the man made self”

And the irony of it all is the more we try to create our own identity the more we end up just looking like every body else. We actually lose our God created individuality swapping it for the identity creating community of pop culture.

Like the woman from Beverly Hills. One day, she had a heart attack and was taken to Cedars Sinai hospital. While on the operating table, she had a near-death experience. She saw God and asked, "Is this it?" God said, "No, you have another 30 to 40 years to live." When she recovered, she decided to stay in the hospital and have collagen shots, cheek implants, a face lift, liposuction and breast augmentation. She even had someone dye her hair. She figured since she had another 30 to 40 years, she might as well make the most of it. She walked out of Cedars Sinai lobby after the last operation and was killed by an ambulance speeding up to the hospital. When she got to heaven she said "I thought you said I had another 30 to 40 years?" And God said "Shirley! Is that you? I didn't recognize you!"

In thinking we can create ourselves from scratch, we are in fact being made in an image manufactured by someone who makes promises that if you by their product, you’ll discover yourself and like what you find in the process. And folks we will never be able to do church right, or reconcile with brothers and sisters and live life on god’s terms or achieve greatness in god’s kingdom or any kingdom really until we find an antidote to the dreaded “I” disease.

First, we need to recognize the “I”’s true condition. Jeremiah 17:9 The heart (the “I”) is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it…or trust it

Secondly, we must be willing to lay down the perpendicular ‘I” and surrender and sacrifice the ego. We do that by taking down the capitol perpendicular, arrogant “I” and run a horizontal line thru the middle of it and transform the “I” into a cross

The third point is as important as the second: we must come alive to Christ. A college student served as a summer missionary in East Malaysia. At one of the church's worship services, a teenage girl came forward to announce her decision to follow Christ and be baptized. During the service, the college student noticed some worn-out luggage leaning against the wall of the church building. “What’s that?” he asked the pastor. The pastor pointed to the girl who had just been baptized and told him, "Her father said that if she was baptized as a Christian she could never go home again. So she brought her luggage." I think there are a lot of us who come to Christ hoping for a new life but don’t experience it because they we don’t bring our luggage. They keep going back to the same old hang out, same old mental patterns. Can I say this lovingly yet strongly, if you are alive in Christ act like it! If you are in a loving relationship with God enjoy it

Lastly, instead of adopting the measure of culture adopt the measure of Christ. And the measure of Christ is to lose yourself and use yourself up in a life not of your making, or your design, but of God’s choosing.

You were carefully made in his image for a purpose. Don’t settle for any thing less.If the bible teaches anything it is that worshiping at the altar of “I” is a one way ticket to no where.

Be ye Holy For I am Holy--or Else!

I am sitting down this morning preparing the first phases my Sunday message on Matthew 18:1-20...the famous "If your brother sins, go reprove him in private"...and if he doesn't listen to you take two or three witnesses, and if that doesn't work, that it to the church. You know the one. I pulled out a commentary by a well known writer, pastor whose exegesis I respect. But his opening lines on the text bothered me. Here is what he said:

"God's desire for His children on earth is purity of life. It is impossible to study scripture attentively and not be overwhelmingly convinced that God seeks above all else for His people to be holy and that He is grieved by sin of every kind. Directly quoting God's command to His Old covenant people Israel, Peter wrote the same command to Christ's church; 'You shall be holy, for I am holy' (1 Peter 1:16 cf Lev 11:44).

I agree that Holiness is important to God. There is, in my understanding of scripture, no way for unholiness to stand before a holy God. But isn't that what Jesus came to do? Didn't His death on the cross make us holy? I understand the words of Peter but aren't his words a glorious declaration of truth rather than a challenge to live up to? Aren't we holy because He is holy? Isn't a definition of justification "Just as if I never sinned"? Isn't it a spiritually unhealthy, potentially crippling and a wrong definition to believe justification means "I will in actuality never sin again?"


Don't misunderstand me. I am not making a case for "sloppy agape" or "cheap grace". I believe firmly that when a person is regenerated, or the Holy Spirit takes up residency in a life, that that person will desire holiness and pursue it fervently because they want to live a life that is pleasing to God. The Holy Spirit is always bringing people to God, and nothing changes when he moves into our hearts. But to say God's desire for his children here on earth is purity bothers me. First, because there is only one thing God can expect me to do in this life and it's not purity, or loving Him, or even doing the best I can.The only thing God knows I will do with any consistency or regularity is fail. Or, to use another term "sin".

I think what God desires from His children here on earth is not purity but relationship. I think the issue of sin and purity was dealt with once and for all on the cross. Sin is a burden. It destroys relationships, and causes devastation to me and hinders my relating to God. But purity is something God has given me by his grace and His mercy, and is something I can never attain or seek to attain my self.

Yes, I think God desires purity for his children here on earth, but it doesn't square with God's gift of Justification. "Therefore being justified by faith we hav e peace with God THRU our Lord Jesus Christ in whom also we have access by faith onto this grace in which we STAND

Do we "continue in sin that grace may about?" No. But the walk of purity is something we get to do being loosed from the shackles and handcuffs of sin and in live with our Lord. It is not the fine print at the bottom of the contract that says. "Now that you are a Christian you'd better walk in purity or else". We walk in purity because we "get to" and because God has made us pure by the blood of His Son. It not something we've "got to".