Too Hot to Handle: Performance-Church

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: You sent me a horrible parody of a contemporary evangelical church service, IC. You’ve got to know I couldn’t leave that alone. I’m still brushing my teeth to get the taste out of my mouth.

But when they’re snarking the modern eleven o’clock church meeting on YouTube, and especially when it looks horribly familiar to most of your audience, you’ve almost got to concede we evangelicals are done like dinner. And it appears we cooked ourselves.

Does this travesty seem familiar to you?

Immanuel Can: You seem more shocked about it than I. There’s a reason why the piece is funny so many people; it’s recognition. The jokes reflect the current reality of many, many evangelical-type churches.

Too Hot to Handle: Nonsense That Remains Nonsense

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: C.S. Lewis has a line I love. He says, “Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.” It applies nicely to lots of things.

I felt a little like that reading the Moody Publishers piece you sent me this week, Immanuel Can. The author of “Worship Leaders: We Are Not Rock Stars”, Stephen Miller, has written a short promotional piece entitled “Worship Leaders are Theologians”, in which he uses one extra-scriptural term to define another. My head is spinning trying to sort out all the modern church-speak.

How far away are we getting from the New Testament here, IC?

Too Hot to Handle: Performance-Church

The most recent version of this post is available here.

In Need of Analysis: Worship as a Lifestyle [Part 1]

The subject of worship is currently getting a little more attention than usual in Christian circles, and that’s not a bad thing. We have John Piper to thank for this, among others who have written about worship as a lifestyle.

Piper starts by encouraging us to enlarge our thoughts of worship:

“… don’t think worship services when you think worship. That is a huge limitation which is not in the Bible. All of life is supposed to be worship.”

and goes on to describe eating at Pizza Hut to the glory of God, having sex to the glory of God and dying to the glory of God. So eating moderately, healthily and gratefully is worship; loving sex within the bounds of marriage is worship; chastity, too, is worship. “You are always in a temple,” Piper says. “Always worship.”

Too Hot to Handle: Blow Up the Worship Team

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Nate at PracticalWorship has decided to “terminate the Worship Team”. I believe he used the words “blowing up”, in fact.

I got all excited. This is radical Christianity, folks!

But to my personal disappointment, Nate doesn’t actually mean it. By “blow up the Worship Team”, he actually means “change its name to ‘the MilePost13 Band’ ”. He lists two reasons for the change: first, that an actual name gives the band a sense of identity, pride and ownership and makes them feel like professionals.

Too Hot to Handle: Nonsense That Remains Nonsense

The most recent version of this post is available here.

In Need of Analysis: Worship as a Lifestyle [Part 1]

A more current version of this post is available here.

Too Hot to Handle: Blow Up the Worship Team

A more current version of this post may be found here.