Canada Rocks the Olympics Opening Ceremony

Canada made a great showing tonight. They should be very proud. But the best part for me was the street poet. Why can we get a poet laureate like that. I have not enjoyed any of the poems read at inaugurations. The poem read at the opening of the olympics was visionary and beautiful. It made me wish that the USA viewed itself that way. If you haven't seem the poem, I'm sure it will be on youtube. To my French-Canadian and Aboriginal Canadian ancestors I say well done.

The New iPad

This is nothing short of a game changer. I believe that this will change the way we do several things. 1. Paper Books will become obsolete in 5 years. The cost of publishing in hard copy is way higher in time and money than an eBook. This will have the same affect on publishing as iTunes has on music. It will create tons of indie book publishers. The market will dictate whose books are popular not the big 6 publishers. Text books will come way down in price and will be more timely and accurate. 2. This will more or less replace laptops in 5 years for the casual user. There is no need for a laptop unless you are using power apps for music or video, etc. As more and more apps operate in the browser, the need for loads of disc goes away. For student, just purchase the keyboard dock and type your papers. All their books will be on the device. Imagine cutting and pasting your quotes from the device to the device. 3. This will become your personal television. I predicted that there would be integration between TV and the web about 10 years ago. This is it. Look at the MLB.com app. You can watch the game and get all kinds of real time info on the trajectory of last pitch thrown, the park, stats, batting order, etc. Awesome. With Hulu and Boxee you and this kind of device, you really have to question why you need a cable service at all. By the way, it will hook up to your TV so you can watch on the big screen if you wish. Imagine witching say 24 and being able to get little bits of data about character history etc. that just pops up. Then eventually, "what kind of car is that?" click for more info... They really did something smart here by making the screen viewable at a 45 degree angle from each side so that you can sit with two friends and look at something. 4. There will be no such thing as a daytimer. 5. The halo effect on MS Office will be huge. Once people get used to iWork on their iPads, they will not want to go back. You can save from these apps into MS formats for compatibility but why would you want to. iPads start replacing MS laptops all over the commercial sector by 2012. 6. By 2015, Apple is outpacing Windows machines in new unit sales. (I predicted this would happen by 2015 when the iPod came out) I'm sticking to it. Apple sales exceed 150 Million is gross revenues. Microsoft will still own the backend server market but Apple will make great advances there as well as more and more IT people become Mac people for their personal computing. Universities will lead the way but all of the leading innovators in our culture will lead the rest into the better future of a Unix based world. 7. The world will become comfortable with cloud computing by 2015 which will free the world from having the app dictate the user interface. This will bring about the downfall of MS as the owner of the desktop unless they counter will something uncharacteristically innovative before it is too late. My .02 Peter
This is nothing short of a game changer. I believe that this will change the way we do several things. 1. Paper Books will become obsolete in 5 years. The cost of publishing in hard copy is way higher in time and money than an eBook. This will have the same affect on publishing as iTunes has on music. It will create tons of indie book publishers. The market will dictate whose books are popular not the big 6 publishers. Text books will come way down in price and will be more timely and accurate. 2. This will more or less replace laptops in 5 years for the casual user. There is no need for a laptop unless you are using power apps for music or video, etc. As more and more apps operate in the browser, the need for loads of disc goes away. For student, just purchase the keyboard dock and type your papers. All their books will be on the device. Imagine cutting and pasting your quotes from the device to the device. 3. This will become your personal television. I predicted that there would be integration between TV and the web about 10 years ago. This is it. Look at the MLB.com app. You can watch the game and get all kinds of real time info on the trajectory of last pitch thrown, the park, stats, batting order, etc. Awesome. With Hulu and Boxee you and this kind of device, you really have to question why you need a cable service at all. By the way, it will hook up to your TV so you can watch on the big screen if you wish. Imagine witching say 24 and being able to get little bits of data about character history etc. that just pops up. Then eventually, "what kind of car is that?" click for more info... They really did something smart here by making the screen viewable at a 45 degree angle from each side so that you can sit with two friends and look at something. 4. There will be no such thing as a daytimer. 5. The halo effect on MS Office will be huge. Once people get used to iWork on their iPads, they will not want to go back. You can save from these apps into MS formats for compatibility but why would you want to. iPads start replacing MS laptops all over the commercial sector by 2012. 6. By 2015, Apple is outpacing Windows machines in new unit sales. (I predicted this would happen by 2015 when the iPod came out) I'm sticking to it. Apple sales exceed 150 Million is gross revenues. Microsoft will still own the backend server market but Apple will make great advances there as well as more and more IT people become Mac people for their personal computing. Universities will lead the way but all of the leading innovators in our culture will lead the rest into the better future of a Unix based world. 7. The world will become comfortable with cloud computing by 2015 which will free the world from having the app dictate the user interface. This will bring about the downfall of MS as the owner of the desktop unless they counter will something uncharacteristically innovative before it is too late. My .02 Peter

Knowing Jesus.

Knowing Jesus is not entirely unlike getting to know any person for after all Jesus is a person. God - yes, but God is in three persons (people). Jesus is the second person of the Trinity.  Therefore let us consider how we get to know someone.

Let's say that there is someone that you really want to get to know.  How might you go about doing that?  Step one - You might get to know about them.  If it is a famous person (and Jesus certainly is that) you would go to the authoritative source on that person and read up on them.  You might Google them, etc.  And this is traditionally (at least for the last 600 years since Gutenberg started printing Bibles) the way that people have approached knowing God.  With the reformation and the advent of the scriptures being more readily available in common languages, those wishing to know God in Christ have taken a studious approach to discipleship. Bible study and listening to sermons becomes the main means through which Jesus is known.  

There is no doubt that knowing about God as revealed through scripture is not only important,  but is essential for anyone who would seek to follow Christ.  But if that is where our discipleship ends, we know Jesus about as much as we know John Adams by reading his biography. As a matter of fact, when study of scripture is the only means of knowing Jesus, it can actually be destructive to our maturing into Christlikeness. 

When we read scripture, it creates deep inside of us a desire to be the people that Jesus is calling us to be.  He calls us to be humble (poor in spirit), broken (mourn), meek, hungry for justice, generous, charitable, unselfish, etc.  We really desire to be those things but we find ourselves unable to change ourselves and oftentimes frustration sets in.  This has a terrible affect on us and on our churches.  Because we have this desire to answer the call of God but do not have the power to stay the course, we find ourself white knuckling it.  We serve and grumble, we witness when its convenient and won't make us look stupid.  This is why churches have such a hard time sustaining service and witness. It's because even though we want to do these things, we have not become the kind of people who do these kinds of things.  So we trudge through our lives doing self-powered ministry which eventually leads to burn out.   

To make matters worse, religious professions like me design programs that would allow people to serve and share God's good news but ultimately these programs have a tendency to bare limited fruit over the long haul.  The other potentially toxic thing that comes with knowledge without power is that we tend to think that we are the only ones that are struggling with this.  It gets especially bad when we run into people who really seem to have a loving, moment-by-moment relationship with Christ.  They serve without getting tired of it. In fact they seem to be energized by it.  The don't witness, they are a witness.  When we encounter people like that or when we look around at church and see all of these people who seem to have their act together, do we go up to those people and ask, "How do I get what you have?" Not usually.  Usually we pretend that we have it all together.  This is why we have that reputation in evangelicalism as hypocrites.  When you get churches full of people who are putting on a show for one another, it hard to imagine that any real transformation occurs.  

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all just admitted that we didn't have it together and that the real reason we were in church was because we are all broken and need Jesus?  That's what it means to be poor in spirit.  

So what's missing. How do we find the power to become the kind of people that scripture has caused us to desire to be?

Before we get to that...

Let's talk about another way that you could get to know someone.  Step Two - Hang around with other folks who desire to know the person.  In church, we call this community.  In the world we see things like fan clubs.  people getting together to talk about the person that they admire.  It really gets exciting when people in a fan club get to meet with someone who has actually had an encounter with the celebrity. Fans ask, "What is he/she really like?" Perhaps that is what small groups are best at.  They put together people seeking and people who are daily encountering Jesus. This provides wonderful opportunities for those who are seeking to ask, "What is Jesus really like?", and to get an answer from a real live person who knows them.  

But how do we get from being in Jesus' fan club (knowing about him and meeting in groups with people who want to know him) to actually being Jesus' friend?

Step Three - You actually need to spend time with Him relationally.  Not just reading about Him. Not just hanging around with His people.  But actually getting to know Him personally.  Your mother was right if she said like mine did, "Watch who you hang around with because you will become like them."  There is no substitute for spending  large amounts of time with Jesus if you truly want to know Him.  If you do, you will be changed by it.  Like any time you spend large amounts of time with a person, over time you begin to like what they like and hate what they hate.  I have been married to Lori for going on 29 years.  Now I actually enjoy  going to the Home and Garden show because she loves it.  I love all kinds of things that she loves because she has affected me over time.  The same is true if you spend a great deal of time with Jesus. Now this is a strange and mystical thing for some folks and I suppose it is for me too but mystical and mystery are not necessarily the same things.  All those born-againers were right when they said Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship.  Next time I will share some thoughts about how to have a relationship with Jesus. You already know how...

For Jesus' sake,

peter

Worship Before and After the Fall.

Adam and Eve were created to be with God and Care for the earth.  They had a personal relationship with God.  God personally guided them in what they were to be doing.  When we look at the account of the Adam and Eve in the Garden, what worship practices do we see? Is there anything that looks like church there?

No! There is nothing that we would traditionally call a worship practice other than Adam and then later Eve doing exactly what God made them to do.  Adam cares for the garden, names the animals, and they both enjoy relational intimacy with their creator. God is looking for relationship.  When say that Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship, it's true although sometimes you wouldn't know it by the way we do church.

How can we know God in a relational way? Tomorrow...

Models of worship

Churches have been warring over worship styles forever.  The first murder in the Bible was over worship.  When we want to figure out what biblical worship is, we typically go to the Old Testament because there is not a lot written about service style in the New Testament.  I'm not sure why we do this.  Don't get me wrong, there is great music and poetry recorded there by people like David, Asaph and others. Moses could write a nice song too. But we are talking about worship practice here and I'm not sure why we think that those Worship Leaders had any better idea how to do this than modern day Worship Pastors who are submitted to Christ in their ministries.  The fact is, that you can support whatever kind of worship you happen to enjoy by quoting scripture.  

Some examples:

Reverent Worship:

“King Hezekiah and his officials ordered the Levites to praise the LORD with the words of David and of Asaph the seer. So they sang praises with gladness and bowed their heads and worshiped.” 2 Chronicles 29:30

Raised Hands (Followed by Face down):

“Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, ‘Amen! Amen!’ Then they bowed down and worshiped the LORD with their faces to the ground.” Nehemiah 8:6

With instrumental accompaniment (Including guitar-like instruments and loud percussion):

“David told the leaders of the Levites to appoint their brothers as singers to sing  joyful songs, accompanied by musical instruments: lyres, harps and cymbals.”
1 Chronicles 15:16 

Here's the horn section:

“Heman and Jeduthun were responsible for the sounding of the trumpets and cymbals and for the playing of the other instruments for sacred song."    1 Chronicles 16:42

Sometimes they liked their worship loud:

“Four thousand are to be gatekeepers and four thousand are to praise the LORD with the musical instruments I have provided for that purpose” 1 Chronicles 23:5

Sometimes REALLY loud:

"The trumpeters and singers joined in unison, as with one voice, to give praise and thanks to the LORD. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals and other instruments, they raised their voices in praise to the LORD and sang: ‘He is good; his love endures forever.’ Then the temple of the LORD was filled with a cloud…” 2 Chronicles 5:13 

The point here is you can justify a style of worship if you want to but God tells us through the prophets that worship is a matter of the heart and is about pleasing God. Not as an act of worship but a lifestyle of worship.

“The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.’”   Psalm 100:2 

I would hate to be caught up in a "rules taught by men" debate over worship.  It seems to me that the folks in the OT were making it up as they went along from the outpouring of their hearts and when they got caught in a worship rut ("but we've always done it that way") believing that there is only one right way to do it, God responds with Psalm 100. 

If we want to know how to find intimacy with God, why don't we look before the fall instead of after the fall? 

Tomorrow: Worship before the fall...

Beyond Singing

So why am I doing this?  Well over the years I have been a little concerned - okay frustrated by the fact that Worship Pastors (like me) are kind of pegged as the people that do the music in church or perhaps the people who put the worship services together.  And I guess that's okay if you think of worship as what we do on Sunday mornings.  But I think that scripture says something entirely different about what worship means for those of us who follow God in the Way of Jesus Christ.  

This blog was created as a place to discuss what it means to worship Jesus Christ in a way that goes beyond singing.  More tomorrow...